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Monday, May 12, 2014

Cards

The convention centre is a small
affair, the kind of place suited to large weddings and craft fairs.
Locals are wandering about it in a daze as Klingons and Wookies
exchange greetings in faux-alien tongues and people in blue paint and
almost no clothing use any excuse they can to practise nudism. Jay is
wandering the convention trying to find a hobbit because he wants to
be one when he grows up. That, or Sauron. He marched off in a huff
after I pointed out it’s rather hard to be someone you can’t say
properly and muttering about being a Dalek then because I’d ruined
his entire joke.

I’m wandering it trying to find out
what a Dalek even is when I take the wrong corner and run into them.
One table, two people in black hats doing card tricks for younger
kids. The younger one is in his late teens, the kind of kid who spent
his time at home learning magic tricks in his bedroom while other
kids had lives, the older is stern and cold, the kind who believes
magic is an Art and probably belongs to some magic circle dedicated
to keeping their secrets private from the world when they can
probably be summed up as misdirection and mirrors.

I’ve moonlighted as one once or
twice, mostly for money and to bring a little real magic into lives.
The one conjurer is rattling off his spiel seriously as he shuffles
cards in and out of his hands with the skill of a surgeon performing
an operation. The older spots me and goes still. Sometimes they know
a real magician when they see it, though I’m not sure how. Or why
they’d want to.

I walk past quickly but the magic finds
its way out anyway. The younger conjurer lets out a small gasp at
whatever he sees on some of the cards but doesn’t flatter at all.
The older one follows me down the hallway, righteous fury radiating
from him to empty it as he grabs my arm.

“Why are you here?” he demands. He
doesn’t let go of my arm, which is mildly impressive.

“Oh,” I say lightly, “I’ve been
roaming the earth, going back and forth on it.”

He gets the reference, even if I might
have mangled it a little. “Your kind are not welcome here.”

“I am just passing through with a
friend; I didn’t expect to find any conjurers in a convention this
small.” I spread my hands; he tries not to flinch. “I’ll try to
keep away from you but I can make no guarantees if you start using
tarot cards. Magic gets downright sarcastic over those.”

His lips twitch almost into a reluctant
smile as he lets go of my arm. “Joe doesn’t even know real magic
exists, magician. What if he wants to become one?”

“You know, David,” I say, and he
starts that I know his name, but names are easy to pull out of the
air as most people scream theirs to the world
unknowing. “I think that you wouldn’t have an apprentice
who is that stupid.”

He lets out a sigh. “This is really a
coincidence then?”

“Oh, no. I’m not sure anything is
where magic is concerned. Is there a Lord of the Rings
exhibit here?”

“No,” David
says. “Please don’t tell me some of those actors –.”

I snort at that.
“No. I’m just travelling with someone who is getting obsessed
over the movies.”

He pauses, then
decides not to ask questions. “I’ll send Joe to talk to you. He’s
going to want to.”

I nod
and wait as he goes back. He doesn’t look back once, trusting me to
remain. His apprentice comes down the hallway a minute later, all
pale and shaky but trying to hide it. “Joe, is it?”

A nod.
Crooked teeth dig deep into his lower lip for
a moment. “I
saw things in the cards,” he stammers, all the patter gone from his
voice.

“It
doesn’t have to happen.” I don’t know what he saw; I could, but
I choose not to. The look of
relief on his face says I guessed correctly. “Magic can change the
world, but that is not what it is for.”

Joe is smart enough
not to ask what it is for, or too scared to. He licks his lips. “I
saw fire in my hands.”

“And
you think the magic wouldn’t burn your hands?” I have no scars on
my hands. He stares at them and then up at me and waits, almost
meeting my gaze. “Magic is change, and change is never welcomed
nor
wanted, Joe. There is no one,
no matter how badly they need my help, who is not glad to see me
leave. Magicians are necessary to guard this world against things
that live outside the darkness, beyond the rational boundaries people
build. But there will come a day when it will be too hard, when the
costs will be more than I can force myself to pay and I will let go
of the magic and walk away.

“I
may die before that moment; many others have. And all I will leave
behind is stories that will, if I am very lucky, convince others to
not become a magician. You, conjurer, you will leave behind laughing
children, baffled adults, apprentices, friends. Sometimes,
when it comes upon you, the magic cannot be refused, but that does
not mean it should be sought.”

“But you’re
still a magician. Still – more,” he whispers, and there is a
yearning in him for more than cards and tricks.

“I don’t.
Magicians don’t use the internet or watch too much television;
magic answers need and we might – do unwise things.” His eyes
widen. All my talk of prices and if it comes to no televison or
internet, it finally makes sense to him. “I am travelling with a
kid who is threatening to be one: I need ammunition.”

Joe tells me about
how Daleks are pepper pots, how Doctor Who was revamped, about Skarro
where they came from, how Davros made them and other details off the
top of his head. I try not to think of that as a
king of magic and thank him.

“Magician.”
I wait. “My –. I –. I can’t make them laugh, like other
conjurers do,” he whispers. “They smile.” I
wait and he finally meets my gaze, his smile a twisting of lips,
forced and gone between moments. “Can you fix my teeth?”

“I can. So
could a dentist.” He says nothing to that. “Would you
still be you if I did it?”

Joe pauses. The
pause lengthens and he finally says: “I don’t know,” proving
David picked the right apprentice after all.

“Do you want to
be you?”

He nods, takes a
deep breath and tries on a smile. “Thank you.”

I walk away before
he can question himself again and find Jay munching on a hot dog
while watching people play act while wearing blue
paint over their bodies. I’m pretty sure it’s not smurfs.

“Hey, kiddo.”
He grins and makes room on the bench for me. “You know you can’t
be a Dalek, either? They’re from Skarro.”

Jay start, staring
up at me in shock. “Is there a reason you don’t want to be Jay,”
I add before he can speak.

“I don’t know.
It’th hard,” he mumbles.

“I imagine so.
You’re not human at all. Being Jay is far harder than being a
hobbit.”

“But they had to
throw the ring in mount doom.”

“You have Charlie
and I as friends, even if she isn’t around right
now.”

He giggles at that.
“Tho I win?”

“I wouldn’t
call being friends with Charlie or me winning.”

Jay
grins at that and lets out a happy sigh, resting his head against my
arm. His right hand trembles a little.

“It’s okay,”
I say, softly enough that he doesn’t have to hear it if he doesn’t
want to.

Jay
doesn’t move for a long moment, and then just watches people play
games of magic and sucks his thumb, ignoring any stares he attracts
entirely. Being Jay, as he
has become. It’s not healing, not yet, but he can’t hate me for
changing him and he’s trying not to hurt himself. It’s enough.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”